"There, Mac, that yarn is told for your especial benefit. What do you think of it?"
"I think you're all white, Woods, and I'm glad to know you," cried Mac as he grasped the painter's hand and shook it warmly.
"Yes, but what do you think of that cur of an Englishman?"
"I think he'll live to see the day he'll regret the mean trick he played you," answered Mac; "but that doesn't prove your contention that all beggars are frauds."
"Did you try to catch him?" interrupted Boggs.
"No, I was too hurt. I didn't mind the money or the clothes. What I minded was the way in which I had squandered my personality. The only thing I did do was to tell Captain Alec Williams of our precinct about him.
"'Smooth-talking fellow?' Williams asked; 'had a scrap with his father? Light-blue eyes and a little turned-up mustache? Yes, I know him—slickest con' man in the business. We've got his mug in our collection; show it to you some day, if you come;' and he did."
"And the great reader of human nature didn't go to London and build arches and kill the fatted calf, after all," remarked Lonnegan, with a wink at Boggs.
"No," retorted Boggs; "he could have suicided himself at home with less trouble."